- FileUsain Bolt during a race at the IAAF World Junior Championship held recently.
Keril Wright and Paul Reid, Staff Reporters
WESTERN BUREAU:
ALL the fanfare has waned, at least for now, and the Bolts of Coxeath District, Trelawny, have settled down to raise - not a champion sprinter - but their 15-year-old son, Usain Bolt.
Usain was the only Jamaican individual gold medal winner at the recently concluded International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Junior Championships held at the National Stadium after he won the 200m in 20.61 seconds on Friday July 19.
Usain also won two more medals as a member of the boys 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams, accounting for three of Jamaica's 11 medals.
"Usain will always be just our little boy," says mother Jennifer of her only child 'Vijay', his pet name since birth. "It helps that he is just a simple boy, he is certainly not fussy so all this has not got to him."
She says that he has in fact been handling his success very well and their greatest worry now is not whether he will win 200-metre championship races but that he comes home on time.
That, and how the family will handle all the offers of help for Usain that have been coming their way. The Bolts, clearly a self-respecting Christian family, certainly are not willing to accept hand-outs. Mrs. Bolt laughed when asked how she was handling all the praise, attention and offers of help coming in for her son - a deeply contemplative laughter. "Oh my gosh," she said. "That is what we were just talking about."
She said the family was wondering how to go about dealing with all these offers. "We don't want to take it and then get ourselves in trouble," she said.
It's not that the family could not do with the help, as Mrs. Bolt, a dressmaker, has not been getting much work and her husband, Wellesley, is currently unemployed.
"We would really need the help," she said. "I would want to know that he (Usain), gets a good education and goes to university and gets to the highest in track and field."
Notwithstanding, she said the family is yet to be personally approached on any of these offers.
"We are only hearing that offers are being made but nobody has come to us and tell us," she said.
The first public offer came from Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate Christopher Jobson, who announced at a reception in Usain's honour at the Waldensia Primary School last Monday, that he would cover Usain's expenses for the next school year as well as a family vacation.
"We heard that he said it to the crowd at the motorcade but he has not come to us," Mrs. Bolt said.
A motorcade was held last week Monday on Usain's return to Trelawny.
She said the family is reluctant to accept this offer as they fear it may have political overtones.
"People here are looking at it politically," she said. "And Usain is only 15 we don't want anybody looking at him in that way."
It was bad enough, she said, that on the day of the motorcade, the vehicle provided for Usain to take part in the motorcade was an SUV provided by Mr. Jobson. This happened against their will, she said, adding, "We weren't planning for that but how things were arranged we couldn't change it."
Currently, she said, Usain has a lot of support.
"The school has set up a committee that works with him, counsellors and so on and that is good," she explained.
The school has also planned a pre-birthday party for Usain on August 16, five days before his birthday, and not even this will disrupt long held family principles.
"I am not going," Mrs. Bolt said. "I am a Seventh Day Adventist and I will not be able to make it. I am not into those types of things," she said.
Last week Tuesday, the Prime Minister P.J. Patterson announced in Parliament a number of incentives for members of the Jamaican team to the World Junior Championships that won a record 11 medals and promised, "something special for Usain" to be announced at a later date. The incentives for the athletes include Government picking up the parents' share of the cost-sharing for those who return to high school in the upcoming Christmas term.
